Pinky

Dear Jane block, reverse applique


One ply silk from Chasing Rainbows, one ply coopworth loosely spun

Whidbey Weaver's Guild Spin In '08

Another great spin in. I headed north very early on Saturday morning and got in a full day of spinning. I spun and plied 4 oz. of Shetland roving from Sporfarm (no website) that I bought at Black Sheep two years ago. This fiber comes from a sheep named Gizmo. I love that.



After a dinner of an outstanding bacon blue cheese burger (thanks, Linda K!) there was lots of chatting and laughing while knitting at the hotel.

On Sunday I spun and plied my other 4 oz. of Shetland.



I don't know the yardage. I didn't bring my own niddy-noddy. I borrowed two different ones and don't know the length for either.

I had this much left after plying. This is also something I love.



Judith MacKenzie McCuin was the instructor this year. She gave a talk on bison very similar to the one she gave at Madrona earlier this year and taught a workshop on three wild downs (a class I took with her at Madrona last year). But it's always wonderful to have time with Judith. Unfortunately with 200 spinners and only one Judith she barely had time to make it around the room to speak with us in small groups.



I didn't buy anything. I don't need anything and I see most of these vendors at several events each year.

I really need some sleep but am dying to keep on spinning.

Still Mo Spinning

Yesterday I plied the rest of the samples from my Madrona class.


Merino


Merino/Jacob/Alpaca/Silk/Bamboo

I also attended my first St. Distaff Day. Along with 200 other spinners. It was packed!



I started out trying to spin my Batt of Beast I got in November. This was tricky to spin and I just wasn't up for the challenge.



The batt is not very thoroughly blended so every time I got to down fiber section (yak, cashmere, camel)it would fall apart because the down fibers need more twist. I also didn't have my wheel adjusted properly and was trying to spin the finest thread I could. It became too frustrating so I moved on to Rose, the Corriedale fleece I got earlier this year. I've only combed a small part of the fleece but realized that I should probably just start spinning it now and can comb the rest as I go. It's been in a plastic bin for months and when I pulled it out I realized that I had not scoured the fleece very well. It was stiff and slightly tacky. It wasn't too hard to spin but I did want to wash a small sample when I got home. I made a two foot sample of a 2 and a 3-ply. I put them in a cup with some very hot water and some Dawn dish soap. The water immediately changed from clear to murky gray. Ewww. I really did not get this fleece very clean. Oh well. I'll spin it up then wash the skeins in the hottest water I can get.

Spin Mo

Margene and Carole have come up with a little spinalong. I have really been neglecting my spinning and love having this little nudge. So last night I shut the computer and did some plying on the class samples I started spinning back in November while catching up on Stash and Burn podcasts.. I did a Navajo ply to keep the color more distinct. Here's the first 142 yards.



Still creeping along on the second Bayerische sock. Still sick. Blech.

Squaresville

This square thing hit me hard on Wednesday. These five were all knit in a day. After using up all my leftover yarn from my Lupine Lace socks (just a coincidence that they matched my pedicure), I turned to my little skein of spinning class sample yarn. It's one ply of merino from Judith Mackenzie McCuin's Color in Plying class and one ply of camel-yak-bison-cashmere from the Three Wild Downs class. It's goofy looking yarn but soooooooooooo soft. The fifth square came out too small. I tried to convince myself it was close enough but seeing it with the other squares it is clearly too small. I'll have to rip it back to the center and add in more increase rows in another yarn.

New Knitter

Today I had Sasha and Erin over for a little Spinning 101. Erin is borrowing one of my wheels so I spent some time plying odds and ends off of bobbins to free them up for her. I made a cute, though odd, skein (which I forgot to photograph) of all the spinning from my Three Wild Downs class and my Color in Plying class from Madrona this year. So now I have very colorful, very soft and completely erradically spun yarn. I also used up a lot of dribs and drabs of things just laying around. I've searched high and low and am still missing a bag full of storage bobbins with who-knows-what on them.

While Sasha was over she gave me a quick introduction to the knitting machine. This is going to take some time to learn. Here's my first attempt.



I had some *cough* problems on the edges.

My second attempt had much better edges.



The center left a little to be desired.

I currently understand nothing about this process. I'm hoping to get good enough to simply make blanks to dye a la Nancy Roberts. My fantasy idea is to make Kauni-like sweater. Who knows what my reality might be.

The State of Pomatomus

So here we are. I have one sock done with three leg repeats. I have have one sock done up to just past the gusset decreases with two leg repeats. I have this much yarn left. Now I get to knit up that last bit of yarn, rip out the top of the first sock and reknit the ribbing. Then use whatever extra yarn that produces to knit the remainder (hopefully) of the second sock. If it's not enough, and I'm thinking it's not, I then move on to ripping out the toe of the first sock and knitting both toes with another yarn. If I were I more motivated knitter, and I'm not, I would rip out everything and start again on a smaller needle doing only two leg repeats on both socks. But that, my friends, is never going to happen.

Here's a tiny peek too at the tiny bit of spinning I've been doing lately. My fiber blending class samples from Madrona.


The garish colors made more garish by night photography.

I'm going to see Crazy Aunt Purl tonight at Pacific Place. Who else is going?

Cheating Cheater

I cheated on Screen-Free Sunday today. But I have a really good excuse. I was interviewed by Jenny and Nicole of Stash and Burn! As Jenny would say, "Yay!" It was really fun to talk to them. I felt like I knew them already from listening to their podcast so much.

I finished the first Pomatomus last night. Just for kicks I weighed the remaining yarn. 47 grams. Okay. Then I weighed the completed sock. 67 grams. Crap! I'm going to knit the second sock with one less repeat on the leg then I'll rip back the first sock to match it I guess. What a waste. They're so pretty all nice and tall.

I've been doing a little bit of spinning lately. I'm finally spinning all the samples I made in Jill Laski's fiber blending class at Madrona last year. The fiber is lovely to spin but the colors were *ahem* experimental. I also overdyed the cormo/silk I dyed a few weeks ago. I got closer to the color I wanted. If it doesn't morph into something heinous overnight I think I'll call it good.

I also made a trip to a fabric store. I tried to resist all the fabric but a pretty good chunk came home with me. I basted my son's spider quilt to ease my guilt feelings. I now have four quilts that need to be quilted (three are partly quilted).

Wool/Mohair/Silk

445 yards of fingering weight yarn. It's very *ahem* irregular. This bat is from Dawn's Custom Carding. It's the fourth or fifth one of here's I've spun. It wasn't as nicely prepared as the others. There was tons of VM. The silk also just doesn't blend in as nicely as wool or mohair. It's very soft and squishy though and I'm happy with it.

Do I Know How to Party or What?

Wes and the boys went off to visit my in-laws this weekend. I went pretty nuts.
First, on Friday night I went to spinning at the shop. I'm ashamed to admit that it was the first time I touched my wheel since the first Friday of last month.
Then when I got home I tried to tackle continuous bias binding for the Lotus quilt.



It's a little mind-bending. Then I spent a very, very long time trying to make the two ends of my binding meet at a nice 45° angle. There was a lot of cursing and ripping out. I finally just fudged it. It looks fairly shitty in that one spot. I can live with it.

On Saturday I went to Bainbridge Island with six other Purlygirls. We hit the sale at Churchmouse, visited the farmer's market, got lunch and went to the fabric store. When I got home with all my fabric goodies I saw that I really have a problem. There was a fat quarter bundle waiting on the front porch that I had mail ordered. I had just bought a fat quarter of one of the fabrics. Then I realized that I had already bought one last week. This is the third time in the last few weeks that I've purchased fabric only to find that I already own some. At least my taste is consistent.

Before Wes left I asked him to turn the water heater all the way up. After nearly killing myself getting in to the shower (hot!) I knew the water was hot enough to clean some fleece. I pulled out the corriedale I bought this year at Black Sheep. It got two good, long, hot soaks. It came out very clean. This evening I cleaned the rest of the targhee I bought at Oregon Flock and Fiber. It came out very clean too. Mostly. It's very clean, fluffy and white with hardly any grease left but there are still patches that are unspeakably filthy. I don't know how to best deal with this. I guess I'll collect up the grossest parts and send them back in for another soak. The entire house smells sheepy and warm right now. I think it's wonderful. For Wes and the boys, not so much.

So Saturday night Wes snuck back to Seattle and we went out for dinner at Tilth (so delicious) and we saw The Simpsons Movie. If you like The Simpsons you will love the movie. I laughed very hard. Wes then had to slink back to his parent's house. I stayed up way too late sewing the borders on the County Lines quilt and piecing the backing.

Today I had to work. But first I ran to Jo-Ann's to get batting for County Lines. A word to the wise, don't buy white batting in a dark colored shirt. I spent the rest of the day covered in white fuzz.

I started a Gypsy Shawl for the shop out of Cashsoft 4-Ply.



Even thought I'm on the really easy part of the shawl right now I made some strange little error that I tried and tried to fix. I finally gave up and ripped but then realized after knitting several rows that I hadn't ripped back far enough. I did this over and over. I left work with 3 rows fewer that I had at the beginning of the day.

Evelyn Clark stopped in the shop today so I got to show her the quilt I finished last week. She'll be delivering copies of her book to us on Tuesday!

Then tonight I made my first attempt at foundation paper piecing. The first square went pretty well.


Messy foundation block


All clean!

The second block was like the shawl. Stitch, rip, curse, repeat. I finally got the damned thing finished and accidentally trimmed off the seam allowance on one side. Shit! I decided I'd just trim them all down and I'd have blocks that are half an inch smaller. I may change my mind tomorrow and just scrap that block. I'm only planning on making four or six to make a little baby quilt. We'll see how I feel about it later.

Geez, That Took Long Enough

After another night of plying, plying, plying the Artful Ewe merino is finally done.



It's about 470 yards of fingering weight yarn.

While I had the camera out I thought I'd take an update shot of the sock yarn blanket. I worked on it quite a bit this weekend. It's perfect car knitting.

Still on a Fiber High

Plying takes time. I always forget that. I spin singles and think, "Now I just have to ply it." Last night I sat down at my wheel at 11:30 with my poor attempt at Navajo plying from this weekend and the two full bobbins of merino. I plied and plied and plied. I finished the first bobbin at 2 am. I have no idea why I didn't just stop at a more resonable time.

I got my fleece last night.



First prize for variegated medium wool. Mmmmm. (I forgot to mention it's a Corriedale.)



I spread it out on a sheet on the deck and pulled out any short cuts, globs of poop (hardly any!) and bits of veg. This is a very clean fleece. Of course, once I put it in the washer the water immediately went to that sickly green-brown. Blech. I let it sit in the sun and heat up before washing. I thought it might help soften up the grease. The first batch is in its second soak right now.

I got some more little bundles of wool/mohair roving from Dawn's Custom Carding. I love these. They're quick and fun to spin and really inexpensive.



I bought, spun and plied this one on Saturday.



I also picked up these two skeins of Corriedale 3-ply fingering weight yarn.



I might use them for Anemoi Mittens or Endpaper Mitts. Or they may be socks.

Fleece Lessons

Day one of Black Sheep was amazing. We left Seattle at 6:30, stopped for a nice breakfast along the way and made it to the fairgrounds at 12:30. After a quick tour of the vendors (and seeing lots of familiar faces) I found out that Judith Mackenzie-McCuin was the fleece judge. I ran over to the fleece judging. Unlike last year's judge, who would look through the fleeces and rank them, Judith shared as much information as possible. She discussed class standards, what makes a healthy fleece, how certain fleeces should be prepared, what garments would best be made from them, etc. I stayed for several hours taking in all the great information. I fell in love with a few fleeces too.

I finally finished spinnign the merino top I got from The Artful Ewe last November. I attempted to Navajo-ply it. My samples skeins were horrible. One dreadfully over-plied. One pitifully under-plied. I also finished my first Welsh sock and got loads done on my sock yarn blanket.

I believe I have managed to take one photo.

More later.

Stupid Sinuses

I've had some miserable sinus thing going on for about a month now. I've been knocked out by headaches. If you see me and I'm grimacing, don't worry, it's not you.

Yesterday was spent at an all day spin-in at Weaving Works. I got a little help fixing the connection for my treadle. It was too long and the making treadling a real chore. My wheel is behaving much better now. I had one of those days where I didn't quite have the touch with the fiber. My rhythm was off or something but it was a bit of a struggle at times. I have just a little bit of the blue/brown merino that I have been spinning for a few months left to do.

Today we did a little exploring. It was opening day for the West Seattle Farmers Market. We don't go to West Seattle often and Seattle magazine had a little article this month on it. The market was nice and very similar to the other neighborhood markets we have in Seattle. Someone from the rather twee-named Coffee to a Tea with Sugar was giving out free mini-cupcakes. I had a mocha one and it was dense, moist and rich. Very nice. The balloon man was there.



There was also a horse-drawn carriage taking people around. We never figured out where it went or where to get on. We stopped at Bakery Nouveau which has been getting great reviews. It's the head baker from Essential Baking Company which I love. It's a lovely little shop. More heavy on pastries than sandwiches. Although they were just bringing pizzas out as we were leaving. The pastries--apple danish and chocolate croissant--were deliciously flaky and light.

I've had a bad run of Netflix rentals. First I got Mr. Show. I found it unwatchable. Honestly, I let it go for a while but I couldn't stand it. I skipped to the next episode which was also completely unwatchable. Popped it back in its envelope. Then I tried Little Murders. I like Jules Feiffer; I like Elliott Gould. Couldn't stand this. Could not bring myself to finish it. So then--now I was really going out on a limb here--I got Battlestar Gallactica. I hate sci-fi. Like hate, hate, hate it with very few exceptions. But everyone keeps raving about this show and saying it's not really sci-fi. So I tried it last night. I didn't hate it. I also was a little more interested in knitting my shawl. I also foolishly thought that "Battlestar Gallactica: Season 1: Disc 1" would be the beginning of the series. But no! Battlestar Gallactica: The Miniseries is the beginning so I kept asking Wes to explain everything to me. Of course, he hadn't seen the miniseries either. But he has seen the 70s tv show so he had some sense of what was going on or what the heck a Cylon was.

So with all the headaches, spinning and running around I've made very little progress on the shawl.

Whidbey Weaver's Guild Spin-In '07

Last year I forgot my camera. Not this time.

I really don't recommend trying to snap photos while driving. But I was all by myself and Deception Pass is really beautiful.



The rest of the shots look like this.



I tried also to get a photo of the Chinese restaurant in the really ornate, fake Dutch house.



I didn't get the windmill in the shot.

Kaye Collins was the lecturer/instructor this year, speaking about camelids.



Our fiber packet had 10 little samples in it, including Guanaco, camel, llama and alpaca. There was also a teeny, weeny piece of Vicuna to touch. Not enough to spin. Apparently it's very difficult to spin.

At events like this all the wheels start to group together. As I looked around my spinning circle the Betty Robertsons looked like they were ready to thrown down with the Louet S-90s.



A woman had a new Louet Victoria wheel with her. That thing is tiny! I thought it was Lendrum-sized but I was wrong.


Please note Dansko clogs for scale.
Tiny. Tiny wheel.


I'm still spinning some hand-painted merino I bought from Heidi Parra in November.

When I got home I snapped a shot of my sock.



Then I ripped it all out.



There are no photos of the haul because I did not buy one single thing. Stunning, I know. But if you could see the stash, you'd understand.

Coming tomorrow: The C Word

Remote Blogging

Cool, the hotel has a computer.
I'm at the Whidbey Weaver's Guild Spin-In. It's been good so far. There are a lot more vendors than last year. I have been good and have resisted all the fiber because I have so much at home. The bummer has been my wheel. It seems to have warped and is now got a fierce wobble and is making treadling and even spinning very hard work. I also forgot to bring a non-skid mat so I'm slipping and sliding all over the gym floor. Another bummer is my Estonian sock. I cranked on it last night. I finally got into a rythym and knit the whole leg. I started arranging the stitches for the heel flap when I realized that I had not done the back of the leg decreases. I'll have to rip all the way back to the colorwork and start again.
I'll be taking Kaye Collins's workshop on camelid fibers today. Vicuna! Guanaco! Alpaca! Hooray!

Super What?

Why does plying take so much longer than you think it will? I finished spinning this green wool/mohair roving, that I bought from Dawn's Custom Carding at Black Sheep, on Saturday. Then spent hours and hours plying. It's only 275 yards of very tightly spun 2-ply yarn. It's a heavy fingering weight destined to become socks.

When I finished this up I pulled out my new wool combs and tried them out on a bit of Cotswold lamb and some of my Targhee from Oregon Flock and Fiber. I ended up with a lot of waste on the Cotswold. I did better with the Targhee. I even spun up a tiny sample of super-fine lace-weight. The fleece is still a bit greasy. I washed it twice and thought I had it pretty nicely clean. Guess I was mistaken.

So no football or parties for me yesterday. Just wool and spinning.